This invention relates to a substrate developing method and developing apparatus for developing semiconductor wafers, glass substrates for liquid crystal displays, glass substrates for photomasks, and substrates for optical disks (hereinafter called simply “substrates”).
A developing apparatus may include a spin chuck for rotatably supporting a substrate, and a nozzle for supplying a developer to the substrate. This apparatus supplies the developer to the substrate held by the spin chuck to dissolve parts other than pattern parts of resist film formed on the surface of the substrate. Then, the apparatus cleans and dries the substrate to remove the dissolved resist film. Such an apparatus is described, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-315643.
The conventional apparatus with the above construction has several drawbacks. The above cleaning process can fail to wash the developer away from the substrate sufficiently, whereby the developer will remain on or in the resist film. In addition, in the drying process, it is difficult to evaporate the developer completely because of the characteristics of the developer. The above condition will result in an inconvenience that the developer remaining on the substrate becomes post-develop defects. There is a further inconvenience that, when conducting an image inspection of electrical properties of lines formed on the resist film, the residual developer can hide defects of the lines, whereby the inspection cannot be carried out properly.